Myth is the first form of human exploration of the world, the first historical form of worldview. The world for primitive man was a living being. A person encounters the existence of the surrounding world and experiences this interaction holistically: emotions and creative imagination are involved in it to the same extent as intellectual abilities. Each event acquires individuality, requires its own description and thus explanation. Such unity is possible only in the form of a kind of story, which should figuratively reproduce the experienced event and reveal its causal conditionality. It is this kind of "story" that is meant when the word "myth" is used. In other words, when telling myths, ancient people used methods of description and interpretation that were fundamentally different from those familiar to us. The role of abstract analysis was played by metaphorical identification.
Imagery in myth is inseparable from thought, since it is the form in which the impression and, accordingly, the event are naturally realized. Myth becomes a way of understanding the world in primitive culture, the way in which it forms its understanding of the true essence of being, i.e. myth acts as a kind of philosophy or metaphysics of ancient man.
Totemism and magic. Mythology was like a philosophy of the history of primitive society. But in the spiritual, conceptual and cognitive spheres of the life of this society, two other layers of its culture played an equally important role: totemism and magic.
At the first stages of their development, people much better (than we now) felt their unity with nature, and therefore willingly identified themselves with its specific manifestations. In culture, this identification took the form of totemism, i.e. belief that each group of people is closely connected with any animal or plant (totem), is related to them. The premise of totemism was a myth that affirmed the possibility of "conversion", i.e. the transformation of a person into an animal, a myth based on one of the oldest beliefs that there is no fundamental difference between a person and an animal. Totemism has retained its position in modern culture (heraldry, household symbols, prohibitions on eating the meat of certain animals - cows in India, dogs and horses - among the Aryan peoples.
The idea of totemic kinship appeared earlier than the awareness of the usual physiological kinship, and it seemed to people of ancient times much more significant. Totemism includes the belief in totemistic ancestors, from which specific groups of people descend. The life and adventures of these ancestors are the content of numerous myths, complex rituals and ceremonies are associated with belief in them. A special origin allowed a particular group to realize its difference from other groups, i.e. realize your individuality. With the advent of totemism, a boundary was drawn between "us" and "them". Thus, a key element of social self-identification was formed, which largely determined the development of human culture, and indeed the entire history of society.
Primitive culture is often defined as magical as based on magical actions and magical thinking. To a certain extent this is true. Of course, in our time, the number of fans of "white" (healing) and harmful ("black") magic is incalculable. Astrological forecasts, divination, rain-making rites, sorcery, and the like have become lucrative activities for many. But in modern culture, the elements of magic, with all their influence, are under the powerful pressure of the rational world, which determines the worldview of our civilization. Not without reason, many modern types of magic try to imitate scientific activity.
In primitive culture, such censors as logic, causation, almost did not interfere with magical-fantastic ways of self-expression. Hence the amazing brightness and diversity of this culture. Reality and fantasy are equally real for primitive man, and a priest's spell sometimes killed him more surely than primitive weapons. Magical forms of thought, fortune-telling, signs, complex rituals were not only a cultural component, they predetermined the very way of life of that time.
Both in the purely spiritual and in the practical realm, one can point to many examples of how expedient, reasonable (in our understanding) is intertwined with what we tend to consider magical or witchcraft acts. The techniques of healing magic are closely connected with folk medicine, magic forms its methodological and theoretical basis. Harmful magic, inflicting damage, love magic were effective means of fashionable and now methods of manipulating consciousness by influencing the psychosomatic structures of a person. Such is the nature of the action of military, hunting and other types of magic.
The special role of magical ideas in archaic culture is associated with one of its qualitative features - boundless syncretism, i.e. absolute non-differentiation, fusion, organic unity of elements, both realistic and fantastic. Syncretism makes it almost impossible to distinguish between the subjective and the objective, the observable and the imaginary, conjectured in primitive culture, since all this is not reflected in it, but, on the contrary, is unambiguously experienced and perceived.
It is impossible to distinguish between the spheres of "supernatural" and "natural" in archaic culture, to separate "magical" ideas from practical ones on purely cognitive grounds. Such a division would affect not the cognitive, but the emotional sphere of the psyche of primitive man, since it implies a functional division of "mind" and "heart", i.e. intellect and emotions, easily accessible to us, but completely impossible for primitive man. The supernatural for a primitive society is not something that violates the natural laws of nature, because this last concept does not yet exist in archaic culture. "Supernatural" is something that disrupts the routine of everyday life, interferes with the usual sequence of events, it is something unexpected, unusual, sometimes extremely attractive and seductive, but, most importantly, always dangerous, capable of threatening life, depriving people of well-being and peace of mind. In such circumstances, a powerful arsenal of magical actions was launched: spells, witchcraft, turning to the spirits of ancestors and gods for help, making sacrifices, even human ones.
In magical thinking, synthesis does not require prior analysis. The existing information blocks that make up magical knowledge are indecomposable and insensitive to contradictions, and are hardly permeable to negative experience.
Magical activity involved the use not only of magical techniques, but also of certain things, which, like the external circumstances of magical procedures, also acquire a magical meaning. Therefore, the awareness of the need for certain external conditions for the success of the spell took the form of faith in "omens", which very often reliably reflected real patterns. Later, along with belief in omens, the belief arose that objects with a magical meaning can not only influence the outcome of individual actions of a person, but also determine his fate.
The world for primitive man was a living being. A person encounters the existence of the surrounding world and experiences this interaction holistically: emotions and creative imagination are involved in it to the same extent as intellectual abilities. Each event acquires individuality, requires its own description and thus explanation. Such unity is possible only in the form of a kind of story, which should figuratively reproduce the experienced event and reveal its causal conditionality. It is this kind of "story" that is meant when the word "myth" is used.
Imagery in myth is inseparable from thought, since it is the form in which the impression is naturally realized and, accordingly, the event Myth becomes a way of understanding the world in primitive culture, the way in which it forms its understanding of the true essence of being, i.e. myth acts as a kind of philosophy or metaphysics of ancient man.
There is still no generally accepted theory of myth.
Myths and religious beliefs are based on animism - endowing inanimate objects with a soul in order to explain their actions. A myth is an erroneous explanation of phenomena with insufficient means and opportunities for cognition. Such was the harsh conclusion of science in the 19th century, and in the 20th century. A number of researchers emphasized the rudimentary-scientific nature of the primitive myth, the quasi-logical, associative principle in myth-making, in which "similar" often turned out to be identical in myth.
The so-called psychological school (W. Wundt, L. Levy-Bruhl, Z. Freud, K. G. Jung) was distinguished by a fundamentally new approach to myth. Myth-making is based on the features of the worldview of primitive man, who perceived all the feelings and emotions caused by a phenomenon as a property of this phenomenon itself. A myth became a product either of a special type of thinking (“primitive thinking”), or of a figurative expression of emotions, or, finally, of the subconscious of primitive man.
But the most influential in the twentieth century. there were two other areas of social anthropology that did a lot to study the essence of myth-making. The first is associated with the name of B. Malinovsky, the second - with the name of K. Levi-Strauss and is known under the name of structuralism.
Myth is not an explanation of phenomena, i.e. not a theory, but an expression of faith experienced as reality. In primitive culture, the myth performs the most important function: it expresses and generalizes beliefs, substantiates the prevailing moral norms, proves the expediency of rituals and cults, and contains practical rules of human behavior. Myth is a pragmatic law that determines religious faith and moral wisdom, like the holy books - the Bible, the Koran, etc.
A myth for a primitive person is a confirmation of some alleged primordial reality, it is, as it were, a precedent that justifies the action of the collective, an ideal example of traditional moral values, a traditional way of life and magical faith.
Structuralism for the first time turned not to the consideration of individual myths, but to the study of them in aggregate, characteristic of each locally stable ethnic formation.
The structure of myths as a symbolic modeling system is an analogue of natural language as a means of communication. The analysis of myths reveals the primary structures of consciousness, i.e. innate "anatomy" of the human mind. In the semantics of myth, binary (binary) oppositions are especially important. These oppositions, as it were, express the fundamental contradictions of consciousness, which mythological thinking seeks to unite.
What conclusions can be drawn? Modern ideas about myth, for all their diversity, allow us to draw some very general conclusions: 1) myths are an attempt by people to comprehend their existence and how to get used to them, to consciously merge with them with the help of emotional and logical associations; 2) the features of mythological thinking are associated with a lack of general abstract concepts - hence the need to express the general, universal through the concrete. For example, the Sumerian language did not have the word “kill”, the phrase “hit the head with a stick” was used. In addition, mythological thinking identified causality with proximity, similarity, alternation; 3) the myth reflects the regularity and orderliness of natural phenomena intuitively recognized by the consciousness of primitive man in the form of rhythm, cyclical movement of its images; 4) the structure of myths reflects, expresses certain features of the human psyche; 5) the myth is associated with collective experience, which for the individual was an object of faith (as the wisdom of ancestors). Individual experience could not change it, myth as the faith of the ancestors, as a matter of faith of the subject himself, was not subject to verification, did not need a logical justification, hence the collective unconscious nature of the myth; 6) the myth reflected the laws of nature, in view of the weakness of abstract thinking, personified them, connected them with a consciously acting will, hence the main character of mythology is a deity; 7) mythology is a means of human self-expression. This is the oldest and eternal form of manifestation of human creative abilities. That is why the system of myths, mythologies of various types, find themselves at the basis of all forms and types of human culture.
The question of priority in the relationship of myth and ritual is analogous to the problem of the ratio of chicken and egg, about which it is difficult to say who precedes whom. The close connection and proximity of rites and myths in primitive culture is undeniable, but even in the most archaic societies there are numerous myths that are not genetically reducible to rituals, and vice versa, myths are widely staged during ritual festivities.
For example, among the Central Australian tribes, during initiation rites (initiation, transfer to the category of adults, full members of the tribe), myths about the wanderings of totemic first ancestors are theatricalized before newcomers, and these myths have their own sacred core, irreducible to ritual - these are the sacred routes of wanderings themselves. Ritual pantomime, in accordance with the specifics of theatrical and dance art, is primarily aimed at imitating the habits of the animal-totem, and the accompanying singing has a majestic character in relation to the totem.
The North Australian tribes have myths and rites that strictly correspond to each other, as well as rites that are not related to myths, and myths that are not correlated with rites and do not originate from them, which does not prevent myths and rites from having a similar structure in principle.
Myth is not an action overgrown with a word, and not a simple reflection of a ritual. However, we can assume that myth and ritual in primitive and ancient cultures, in principle, constitute a certain unity (ideological, functional, structural), that mythical events of the sacred (sacred) past are reproduced in rituals, that in the system of primitive culture, myth and ritual constitute two of its aspects. - verbal and effective, "theoretical" and "practical". A similar understanding of the internal unity of myth and ritual, their living connection and common practical function was affirmed by Bronislav Malinovsky.
The reality of the myth, as the researcher explains, goes back to the events of prehistoric mythical time (the past), but remains a psychological reality for the aborigine due to the reproduction of myths in rituals and the magical significance of the latter.
There are many definitions of ritual. In many anthropological works in Russian, both domestic and translated, the term "rite" is used as a synonym for the word "ritual". Both terms are multi-valued.
From an external point of view, a ritual can be defined as follows: a standardized set of actions of symbolic content, performed in situations prescribed by tradition. The words and actions that make up the ritual are very precisely defined and change very little, if at all, from one instance of the ritual to the next. Tradition also determines who can perform the ritual. Rituals often use sacred objects; it is assumed that at the end of the ritual, its participants should experience a general emotional upsurge. In the case of a magical ritual, its participants believe that the ritual itself is capable of causing certain results - changes in the external environment. Religious rituals usually symbolize fundamental beliefs and are performed in order to demonstrate piety and reverence. Rituals also serve to strengthen group unity. In times of crisis, rituals can relieve feelings of anxiety and distress.
Another definition: a ritual is a symbolic behavior that is repeated at certain periods of time, expressing in a stylized explicit form certain values or problems of a group (or individual). In this understanding of the term, even small and short-lived social groups (or individuals) can develop rituals that are not part of a common cultural tradition, but are specific to this group.
An attempt to analyze the diverse social functions of rituals as a single systemically organized whole belongs to Emile Durkheim. Studying the beliefs and rituals of the natives of Australia, Durkheim came to the conclusion that the task of rituals is to divide the world into sacred, sacred and ordinary, profane (and to connect these two worlds at certain periods).
That is, the Australian aborigines distinguish between two lives, two worlds, and this dualism finds its expression in a religious cult - in rituals and ceremonies.
Here is how Pitirim Sorokin interprets this idea of Durkheim. The life of the Australian tribes is usually divided into two periods. During the first period, the clans are scattered over the territory they inhabit, cut off and isolated from each other, their life flows calmly, without much heat of passion, sometimes even boring, in work and care - they are busy fishing, hunting, providing everything necessary for life. The second period, which usually occurs after the end of the rainy season, differs sharply from the first. At this time, scattered clans gather together, ordinary life is replaced by a holiday - "korobbori". There is no need to work anymore - sufficient food supplies are prepared in advance. The very fact of uniting clans scattered before disrupts the routine course of life, everyone experiences a feverish revival; the pace and rhythm of life is accelerating. There is a build-up of a kind of psychic energy, as in the crowd at the stadium before the start of the match, or in the auditorium before the concert, or in the rally crowd. Living normally and measuredly throughout the year, the natives become easily excitable during this period, and any, even the simplest stimuli, cause a violent reaction, as if the accumulated energy is just waiting for a reason to pour out.
The tension grows and grows, and, finally, there is a general "detente": the natives fall into a sacred ecstasy, while prohibitions, in particular sexual ones, disappear, and jewelry, new tattoos, masks transform the triumphant not only externally, but also internally, forcing everyone consider yourself at this moment a new, different being, not the one that did the boring work all long and hard year. It follows from this that a belief in the existence of two worlds must have arisen in consciousness: the ordinary world and the sacred world (where a person is, as it were, reborn and experiences extraordinary experiences.
This explains the division of rituals into two main categories: negative and positive. The first are a system of prohibitions designed to sharply divide the world of the sacred and the world of the vulgar. For example, a non-sacred being cannot touch a sacred one: the uninitiated cannot not only pick up a churinga, but even see. Churinga - a sacred object - a stone or piece of wood on which the sign of the totem is carved and which therefore has supernatural qualities. In some tribes, each man has his own churinga, which contains his life. Until the time they are stored in special caves; a special ritual is held for young people, during which they see their churingas for the first time; usually you can not eat the meat of a totem animal. Both spatial and temporal mixing of these two worlds is prohibited. The result of the prohibition of spatial mixing is obvious: this is the creation of special sacred places - caves - for performing certain rituals and storing shrines. The prohibition of temporary mixing comes down to the prohibition of certain "vulgar" everyday activities during periods of specially religious life (on religious holidays). During some ceremonies, it is forbidden to eat, during others, any work is prohibited.
Positive rites are performed with the opposite goal - not to separate the two worlds, but to bring the believer closer to the sacred world. Rituals of this type include the ritual communal eating of the body of a totem animal, sacrifices for the same purpose, certain actions performed in order to win the favor of the deity and ensure the desired state of affairs, either by re-enacting the desired situation and imitating its participants, or by re-enacting the past. In addition, Durkheim identifies a special type of ritual - redemptive which are committed with the aim of expiating or mitigating the consequences of a sacrilegious act.
Durkheim's classification of rituals does not include all the variety of types of rituals. Rituals are classified according to different criteria. It is important to divide rituals into magical And religious. IN of magic (witchcraft) there is no faith in personified supernatural forces, that is, in God, characteristic of religion. Magic rituals pursue immediate, immediate goals and, very importantly, they are the work of individuals, and the whole society (clan, tribe) is usually interested in the results of religious rituals, and therefore, as a rule, the whole society (or key groups, or symbolic public figures ) participate in their implementation.
Rituals can also be classified according to their functions. First of all, one should highlight crisis rituals performed by an individual or a group at critical times in life or in response to an acute and utterly urgent problem. An example is the rain dance, usually performed during a long drought, when crop loss threatens the tribe with complete extinction. This complex ritual is performed with the participation of almost the entire tribe under the guidance of high priests, shamans or priests. It is detailed and clearly designed, came from ancient times. Note that in general ritual and improvisation are mutually exclusive.
calendar rituals occur regularly as predictable, recurring natural events occur, such as the changing of the seasons, the changing phases of the moon, the ripening of crops, etc. In all rural cultures there is a huge number of such rituals, often complex, saturated with elements of eroticism, with their own special gods, heroes, mythical characters. With the development of society, its industrialization, they are partly secularized, partly die off. Calendar rituals are often considered as one of the varieties of rituals of passage.
We have named only the most common types of rituals. In general, depending on the criteria used and the level of analysis, one can single out a literally infinite number of types of rituals. For example, rituals can be classified according to the participation of men or women in purely men's, pure female And mixed rituals. Only men have the right to participate in purely male rituals, but some of them appear as women and even symbolically imitate the physiological functions inherent in women; in purely feminine rituals, on the contrary, individual women imitate the physiological functions of men. But this does not mean accepting the role of a woman or, conversely, a man. This means being a woman or, respectively, a man during a period of ritual time, cut off from the normal alternation of times.
In addition, rituals can be classified by mass, that is, by the number of participants, according to the degree of structure, according to the alternation of elements of amorphism and structuredness, group characteristics, within which and in the name of which they are executed. The last point is very important, because the rituals are stratified, and stratified in two ways - in relation to both the earthly and the mythological hierarchy. Some rituals can only be performed by chieftains, or only by elders, or only by hunters, and the performance of the corresponding rituals by members of other groups entails untold hard consequences for both the perpetrators and the tainted groups, and even the tainted rituals themselves. The gods (and other mythical creatures) are jealous of the performance of rituals. Thus, the use of a ritual object intended to serve in honor of one mythical creature in a ritual intended for another can lead to completely unpredictable consequences. For example, to a change in the places and significance of the gods, in short, to a revolution in the universe, which, of course, will also affect people (in the form of revenge of an offended god).
Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected]|| http://yanko.lib.ru || 1- Scanning and formatting: Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || [email protected]|| http://yanko.lib.ru || Icq# 75088656 || Library: http://yanko.lib.ru/gum.html || update 05/09/06 POPULAR HISTORICAL LIBRARY Edward Burnett Tylor MYTH AND RITE IN PRIMARY CULTURE Tylor EB = Myth and rite in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -1 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected]|| http://yanko.lib.ru || 2- POPULAR HISTORICAL LIBRARY Edward Burnett Tylor MYTH AND RITE IN PRIMARY CULTURE Tylor EB = Myth and rite in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -2624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected]|| http://yanko.lib.ru || 3- SMOLENSK "RUSICH" 2000 UDC 397 LBC 86.31 T14 The series was founded in 2000 Translated from English by D. A. Koropchevsky T 14 Tylor E. B. Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - 624 p. ill. - (Popular Historical Library). ISBN 5-8138-0161-8 The publication is a selection of pages from the famous work of one of the most prominent ethnographers and historians of the 19th century. E. B. Tylor "Primitive Culture" (1871). The book contains a huge amount of factual material on the primitive beliefs of the peoples of the world and acquaints the reader with the origins of religion, with the most ancient ideas and rituals of mankind, the remnants of which (“living evidence”, “monuments of the past”, as the author aptly defined) can be found in modern culture. For a wide range of readers. UDC 397 LBC 86.31 ISBN 5-8138-0161-8 © Compilation, word processing, notes and indexes. "Rusich", 2000 © Development and design of the series. "Rusich", 2000 Tylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -3624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 4- Electronic Table of Contents Electronic Table of Contents .................................................................. ................................................. .................................4 CONTENTS ............................... ................................................. ................................................. ...........................................5 Chapter I. SURVIVES IN CULTURE..................................5 ................................................. ...............................7 Sphinx........... ................................................. ................................................. ................................................. .....15 Athenian king Aegeus questioning the oracle .............................................. ................................................. ...............................17 Human sacrifice.................................................. ................................................. ....................................23 Chapter II MYTHOLOGY...... ................................................. ................................................. ....................25 Atlas with the globe on the shoulders....................... ................................................. ................................................. 27 Prometheus molds the first man out of clay .............................................. ................................................. ............28 African sorcerer .................................. ................................................. ................................................. ........40 Werewolf ........................................ ................................................. ................................................. .......................43 Hermes kills the hundred-eyed Argus....................... ................................................. .................................................46 Tezcatlipoca - one of the main deities of the Indians of Central America ..........49 The Egyptian goddess of the sky Nut absorbs and gives birth to the sun .............................. ................................................. .50 Hindu sun god Surya....................................... ................................................. .................................58 Chapter III. ANIMISM................................................. ................................................. ...................... ....64 Siberian shaman....................................... ................................................. ................................................. .....74 Penelope in a dream is her sister....................................... ................................................. ................................................75 The crossing of the soul of the deceased to the world of the dead (fragment of the painting of the ancient Greek lekythos, 5th century BC BC) ....... 105 Domovina - a tomb frame in which the Slavs put funeral food. Russia, 19th century ..............................108 While visiting family graves, the Chinese decorate them with flowers and eat cold snacks ..............109 Odysseus, who descended into the afterlife, talks with the shadow of the soothsayer Tiresias .......................................... 113 Judgment of Osiris in the afterlife ................................................. ................................................. .........................119 Spirit hunts emus in the afterlife. Australia................................................. .................................................128 Punishment of sinners in hell. Antique book illustration, China .............................................. ..............131 Chinese paper money dedicated to the souls of ancestors .............................. ....................136 Possession ............................... ................................................. ................................................. ..............................147 Old Russian amulets-pendants............. ................................................. ................................................. .....155 Salamander - the spirit of fire .......................................... ................................................. ...............................................172 Spirits of water ................................................. ................................................. ................................................. .........174 Gnomes - spirits of the earth's bowels .................................. ................................................. ...............................................179 Sacred Oak in the Prussian sanctuary Romov ....................................................... ................................................. ..180 Apis - the sacred bull of the ancient Egyptians.................................................. ................................................. ................183 Cat - a sacred animal Bast of the ancient Egyptians..... ................................................. ................................................184 Hanuman, the monkey king, builds a bridge between Ceylon and India...... ................................................. ..............185 The symbol of eternity is a snake biting its tail .............................. ................................................. ..................................186 Asclepius - the ancient Greek god of healing with a snake .............................. ................................................. ..........187 Trimurti - the trinity of the supreme gods of Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva ............................ ......................190 Hindu god Indra - the lord of lightning ................ ................................................. ................................................196 Wotan - god of thunder of the ancient Germans.......... ................................................. .......................................198 Agni - the Hindu god of fire..... ................................................. ................................................. .................................. 203 Mithras trampling the bull .......................... ................................................. ................................................. .........208 Selena - goddess of the moon of the ancient Greeks.................................. ................................................. ......................210 Chapter IV. RITES AND CEREMONIES ............................................................... ................................................. ...213 Human sacrifices among the Maya .............................................. ................................................. ................220 Conclusion .................................. ................................................. ................................................. ..............243 NOTES............................... ................................................. ................................................. ....248 Chapter 1....................................... ................................................. ................................................. ....................................248 Chapter 2..... ................................................. ................................................. ................................................. ...............................248 Chapter 3............. ................................................. ................................................ ................................................. ...............................251 Chapter 4............... ................................................. ................................................. ................................................. ..................................256 INDEX OF ETHNONYMS .............................................. ................................................. ....................................258 NAME INDEX .............................. ................................................. ................................................. ..................266 CONTENTS............................... ................................................. ................................................. .......274 Tylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -4624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 5- CONTENTS Chapter I. Survivals in culture Survival and superstition.- Children's games.- Gambling.- Old sayings.- Children's songs.- Proverbs.- Riddles. prejudice against the resurrection of drowned people......3 Chapter II. Mythology Mythological fiction, like all other manifestations of human thought, is based on experience. - The transformation of myth into allegory and history. - The study of myth in its actual existence and development among modern savage and barbarian peoples. nature.- Personification of the sun, moon and stars; waterspout; sand column; rainbow; waterfall; pestilence. - Analogy turned into myth and metaphor. - Myths about rain, thunder, etc. - The influence of language on the formation of a myth. Material and verbal personification.- Grammatical gender in relation to myth.- Proper names of objects in relation to myth.- Degree of mental development conducive to mythical fictions.- Teaching about werewolves.- Fantasy and fiction.- Natural myths, their origin, rules their interpretations.--Natural myths of higher savage societies, compared with kindred forms among barbarous and civilized peoples.--Heaven and earth as universal parents.--Sun and moon: eclipse and sunset in the form of a hero or a maiden swallowed up by a monster; the sun rising from the sea and descending into the underworld; the jaws of night and death; Symplegades; the eye of heaven, the eye of Odin and Gray.- The sun and the moon as mythical civilizers.- The moon, its impermanence, its periodic death and resurrection.- The stars, their generation.- Constellations, their place in mythology and astronomy.- Wind and storm.- Thunder.- Earthquake .............................................. .43 Chapter III. Animism Religious concepts exist in general among primitive human societies. - The 620 denial of religious concepts is often confused and misunderstood. - The definition of the minimum of religion. - The doctrine of spiritual beings, here called animism. - Animism, divided into two sections: the doctrine of the soul and the doctrine of other spirits. - The doctrine of souls, its distribution and definition among primitive societies. - The definition of ghosts, or ghosts. - The doctrine of souls as a theoretical representation of primitive philosophy, designed to explain phenomena now included in the field of biology, especially life and death, health and disease, sleep and dreams, ecstasy and visions. - Relationship of the soul by name and nature to shadow, blood and breath. the absence of souls in sleepers and ghost-seers.- The theory of visits by other souls.- Ghosts of the dead, which are alive.- Doubles and ghosts. - The soul retains the shape of the body and is mutilated along with it. - The voice of the spirits. - The concept of the soul as something material. - Sending souls to serve others in a future life through funeral sacrifices of wives, servants, etc. - Souls of animals , their departure to another life during funeral sacrifices. - The souls of plants. - The souls of objects, sending them to the next world during funeral sacrifices. - The relationship of the primitive doctrine of the souls of objects to the Epicurean theory of ideas. - The historical development of the doctrine of souls, starting from the ethereal soul primitive biology to the immaterial soul of modern theology. - The doctrine of the existence of the soul after death. - Its main divisions: the transmigration of souls and the future life. - Transmigration of souls: rebirth in the form of a person or animals, transitions into plants and inanimate objects. - The doctrine of the resurrection of the body is expressed weakly in the religion of savages. - Future life: a common, though not universal, belief among primitive societies. - Future life is rather continuation of existence, not immortality. - Secondary death of the soul. - The ghost of the deceased remains on earth, especially with an unburied body. - Attachment to the mortal remains of the body. - Festivities in honor of the dead. - Wandering of the soul to the land of the dead. the land of the dead appears to lie in the west. - The realization of religious concepts that are in circulation in primitive and civilized theology in stories about 621 visits to the country of spirits, - Localization of the future life. - Its remote areas on earth: earthly paradise, the islands of the blessed. stars. - Sky. - The historical course of beliefs in such localization. - The nature of the future life. - The theory of the continuation of existence, which is apparently original, belongs mainly to primitive societies. - Transitional theories. - The theory of retribution, obviously a derivative, belongs mainly to civilized peoples. - The doctrine of moral retribution, developed in a higher culture. - Their practical influence on the feelings and mode of action of the human race. - Animism, developing from the doctrine of souls into a broader doctrine of spirits, becomes the philosophy of natural religion. - The concept of spirits is similar to the idea of souls and, obviously, derived from it. - Transitional state: categories of souls passing into good and evil demons.- Honoring the shadows of the dead.- Teaching about the infusion of spirits into the bodies of people, animals, plants and inanimate objects. Fetishism.- The incorporation of disease-producing spirits.- Spirits that hold on to the mortal remains of the body.- A fetish formed by a spirit that is embodied in, associated with, or acts through an object.- Analogues Taylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -5624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 6- fetishism in modern science.- Worship of stones and pieces of wood.- Idolatry.- Remains of animistic phraseology in modern language.- The decline of the animistic doctrine of nature.- Spirits as personal causes of natural phenomena. good or evil geniuses.- Spirits that appear in dreams and visions: nightmares, brownies and kikimoras (incubi and succubus).- Vampires. Spirits for which materiality is recognized. - Guardian spirits and household spirits. - Spirits of nature; development of the doctrine about them. - Spirits of volcanoes, whirlpools, rocks. - Worship of waters: spirits of wells, streams, lakes, etc. - Worship of trees: spirits embodied or living in trees, spirits of groves and forests. - Worship of animals: animals , serving as objects of worship either directly or as the embodiment of deities. - Totemism. - The cult of snakes. - Species deities; their relation to the ideas of prototypes - arche622 types. - The highest deities of polytheism. - Human properties applied to a deity. - The highest persons of the spiritual hierarchy. - Polytheism: the course of its development at the highest and lowest stages of the development of culture. the concept of their meaning and functions.- God of the sky.- God of rain.- God of thunder.- God of the wind.- God of the earth.- God of water.- God of the sea.- God of fire.- God of the sun.- God of the moon.... .................................... 129 Chapter IV. Rites and ceremonies Religious rites: their practical and symbolic meaning. - Prayers: the continuous development of this rite from the lowest to the highest levels of culture. - Sacrifices: the original theory of gifts evolves into the theories of honoring and renunciation, - The manner in which sacrifices are accepted by the deity. - Material transfer of sacrifices to the elements, fetish animals and priests. - Consumption of the substance of sacrifices by a deity or idol. - Blood offering, - The transfer of sacrifices through fire, - Smoking. - Spiritual transfer: the consumption or transfer of the soul of the sacrifices. - Motives for sacrifices. - Transition from the theory of gifts to the theory of honoring: insignificant and formal offerings; sacrificial feasts. - The theory of renunciation. - Sacrifice of children. - Substitution in sacrifices: offering of a part instead of the whole, of the life of a lower being instead of the life of a higher one; offering likenesses.-Modern remnants of sacrifices in folk beliefs and religion.-Fasting as a means of inducing ecstatic visions. - Forms of fasting in the history of the development of society. - Medicinal substances for inducing ecstasy. - Fainting and seizures caused for religious purposes. - Turning to the east and west. funerals, prayer, and the building of temples.- Purification by fire and water.- Transition from material to symbolic purification.- Associating it with various occasions of life.- Purification in primitive societies. - Religious purification practiced at the highest levels of culture .............................................................. 475 Conclusion ................................................. ...............................547 Note.................... ................................................. ................567 Index of ethnonyms .................................. .........................................587 Index of names...... ................................................. ................604 Tylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -6 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 7- Chapter I. RELIEFS IN CULTURE □ Survival and superstition. □ Children's games. □ Gambling. □ Old sayings. □ Children's songs. □ Proverbs. □ Riddles. □ Meaning and survivals of customs: wishes when sneezing, sacrifices when laying buildings, prejudices against reviving drowned people. When a custom, habit, or opinion is sufficiently widespread, it is like a stream which, once having carved a channel for itself, continues its course for ages. We are dealing here with the persistence of culture. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the changes and upheavals in human history allow so many small streams to continue flowing for so long. In the Tatar steppes 600 years ago it was considered a crime to step on the threshold and touch the ropes at the entrance to the tent. This view seems to have survived to this day. 18 centuries before our time, Ovid mentions the popular prejudice of the Romans against marriages in May, which he explains, not without reason, by the fact that the funeral rites of Lemuralia fell on this month: 3 Virgins and widows alike avoid marriage unions This time. In May, marriage threatens with early death, This is what the people express with a saying known to you: Only take an evil wife in May for yourself. The belief that marriages entered into in May are unhappy lives in England to this day. Here we have a striking example of how a well-known idea, the meaning of which has disappeared many centuries ago, continues to exist only because it once existed. One can find thousands of examples of this kind. The stability of survivals allows us to assert that the civilization of the people in which such survivals are found is the product of some more ancient state, in which one should look for explanations of customs and beliefs that have become incomprehensible. Thus, collections of such facts should serve as the subject of development as mines of historical knowledge. When dealing with such material, one must be guided primarily by observation of what is happening now. History, on the other hand, must explain to us why old customs are preserved in the environment of a new culture, which, of course, could not give birth to them, but should, on the contrary, strive to supplant them. What direct observation gives us is shown by at least the following example. The Dayaks in Borneo did not have the custom of cutting wood, as we do, with a notch in the form of a U. When the whites, among other innovations, brought this method with them, the Dayaks expressed their dislike for the innovation by imposing a fine on any of their who began to cut wood according to the European model. The native lumberjacks, however, were so well aware of the superiority of the new method that they would use it secretly if they were sure that others would keep silent about it. That was 20 years ago, and it is very likely that the foreign way of logging could cease to be an insult to Dayak conservatism. However, a strict prohibition prevented him from establishing himself. We have here a striking example of a survival, which is maintained by virtue of 4 great-grandfather's authority, in direct defiance of common sense. Such a course of action might, as usual, and with good reason, be called superstition. This name generally fits a considerable number of survivals, such as those that can be collected by the hundreds from books on folk traditions and on so-called occultism. However, the word "superstition" at present has the meaning of reproach. For the purposes of the ethnographer, it would be desirable to introduce such a term as "survival". This term should serve as a simple designation of a historical fact, which the word "superstition" can no longer be. To this category of facts must be placed, as private survivals, many cases where much of the old custom has been preserved to make it possible to recognize its origin, although the custom itself, having taken a new form, has been so applied to new circumstances that it continues to take its place. by virtue of its own importance. With this view of things, it would only in a few cases be fair to call the games of children in modern Europe superstitions, although many of them are survivals, and sometimes wonderful. When we consider the games of children and adults from the point of view of the ethnological conclusions that can be drawn from them, what strikes us first of all in these games is the fact that many of them are a playful imitation of the serious business of life. Just as today's children play at dinner, horseback riding and going to church, so the main childish pastime of the savages Tylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -7624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 8- there is an imitation of things that children will seriously engage in a few years later. Thus, their games serve as real lessons for them. The games of the Eskimo children consist in shooting at targets with small bows and in building little huts out of snow, which they light with the remnants of the lamps begged from their mothers. Small Australian children use miniature boomerangs and spears as toys. Their fathers retained an extremely primitive way of obtaining wives by forcibly taking them away from their native tribe, and so the game of “bride stealing” was noticed among the most common games among native boys and girls. Play, however, usually survives the serious occupation it serves as an imitation of. A clear example of such an experience is provided by the bow and arrow. We find this ancient and widespread weapon at the stage of savagery in both barbarian and ancient culture. We can trace it back to the Middle Ages. But at the present time, when we look at a gathering of shooters, or when we drive through the villages at that time of the year when children have the most toy bows and arrows, we see that the ancient weapon, which among the few savage tribes still plays a deadly role in hunting and in battle, has become a mere relic, a toy. The crossbow, a comparatively later and local improvement of the ordinary bow, has survived in practical use even less than the bow, but as a toy it exists throughout Europe and, apparently, will remain in use. According to antiquity and extensive distribution in various eras - from savagery to antiquity and the Middle Ages - along with a bow and arrows there is a sling. But in the Middle Ages it fell out of use as a practical weapon, and the poets of the 15th century. in vain point to the art of wielding a sling as one of the exercises of a good soldier: Practice throwing stones with a sling or hand: This can often come in handy when there is nothing else to shoot with. Men clad in steel cannot stand when stones are thrown in multitude and force; And the stones are indeed everywhere, And it is not difficult to carry slings with you. An example of the economic use of throwing tools, which are akin to a sling, within the civilized world, can perhaps be found only among the shepherds of Spanish America. They are said to throw their lasso or bola so skillfully that they can seize the animal by any of the horns and turn it as they please. But the use of the sling, that crude ancient weapon, has survived chiefly in the games of the boys, who here again are, as it were, representatives of the ancient culture. Just as the games of our children preserve the memory of primitive military techniques, they sometimes reproduce ancient stages of cultural history dating back to the childhood period in the history of mankind. English children, who amuse themselves by imitating the cry of animals, and New Zealanders, who play their favorite game, imitating in a chorus the screech of a saw or a plane, and the shots of a gun and other tools, making the noise inherent in various instruments, equally resort to the element of imitation, which was so important in language education. When we study the ancient history of the number system and see how one tribe after another learned to count, passing through the primitive number on the fingers, this is of known ethnographic interest for us, as it gives an idea of the origin of the most ancient numbering. The New Zealand game of "tee" consists, they say, in counting on the fingers, and one of the players must name a known number and at the same time immediately touch the corresponding finger. In the Samoan game, one of the players sticks out several fingers, and his opponent must immediately repeat the same, otherwise he loses. It may be native Polynesian games or games borrowed from our children. In the English children's game, the child learns to say how many fingers the nanny shows him, and a certain formula of the game is repeated: "Buk, beech, how many horns have I raised?" The game in which one raises his fingers and the others must raise exactly the same is mentioned by Strutt. We can see little schoolchildren on the streets playing the guessing game, where one of them stands behind and holds up a certain number of fingers, and the other has to guess how many. It is interesting to note the wide distribution and antiquity of these empty amusements, about which we read in Petronius the Arbiter, a writer of the time of Nero, the following: “Trimalchio, in order not to seem upset by the loss, 7 kissed the boy and ordered him to sit on his back. The boy immediately jumped on top of him and hit him on the shoulder with his hand, laughing and shouting: "Buka, buka, how many are there?" Simple counting games on fingers should not be confused with the game of addition, where each of the players plays Tylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. -8 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 9- puts his hand. It is necessary to name the sum of the exposed fingers; whoever says it correctly wins. In fact, everyone is in a hurry to name the number of fingers before they see the hand of their opponent, so the art of the game consists mainly in guessing quickly. This game is a constant pastime in China, where it is called "guess how much", and in Southern Europe, where it is known in Italy, for example, under the name "morra", and in France - under the name "murre". Such an original game could hardly have been invented twice, in Europe and Asia, and since the Chinese name does not indicate its antiquity, we may consider it probable that Portuguese merchants introduced it to China as well as to Japan. The Egyptians, judging by the names, also had some kind of finger game in use, and the Romans had their own game, mikare digitis, which was played by butchers with their usual customers for pieces of meat. It is difficult to say whether it was "morra" or some other games. When Scottish guys take each other by the crest and say: "Do you want to be mine?" - they are unaware of the old symbolic custom of taking into feudal allegiance, which continues with them as a survival. The wooden drill for making fire by friction, which, as is known, was used in the domestic life of many primitive or ancient tribes, and which is already preserved among the modern Hindus as a time-honored method of lighting a pure sacrificial fire, exists in Switzerland in the form of a toy. With his help, children light a fire as a joke, as the Eskimos would do it seriously. In Gotland, people still remember how the ancient sacrifice of a wild boar has in modern times turned into a game in which young boys dressed up in fancy dress, inked and painted their faces. The victim was represented by a boy wrapped in fur and placed on a bench, with a bunch of straw in his mouth, which was supposed to represent the bristles of a boar. One of the innocent children's games of our time has a strange connection with an ugly fairy tale that is more than a thousand years old. In France, they play it like this: children stand in a circle, one of them lights a folded piece of paper and passes it to his neighbor, saying “Alive, alive, smoking room”, and he passes it on, and so on around the circle. Everyone pronounces these words and passes the burning piece of paper as soon as possible, because whoever has it goes out must give the phantom, after which it is announced that "the smoking room has died." Grimm mentions a similar game in Germany, where they play with a lighted splinter, and Gallivel quotes a nursery rhyme that is said at this game in England: Jack is alive and in good health, Beware that he does not die in your hands. Those familiar with ecclesiastical history are well aware that a favorite polemical device of adherents of the mainstream faith has been the accusation of heretical sects that they perform the sacraments of their religion in the form of disgusting orgies. The pagans told these stories about the Jews, the Jews about the Christians, and the Christians themselves achieved a sad excellence in the art of attacking their religious opponents, whose moral life actually often seemed to be extremely pure. The Manicheans in particular were the subject of such attacks, which were later directed at the sect whose followers were considered the successors of the Manicheans. We are talking about the Paulicians, whose name reappears in the Middle Ages in connection with the name of the Cathars. These latter were called boni homines ("good people"), and this name later became the common name of the Albigensians. Obviously, the ancient Paulicians aroused the hatred of orthodox Christians by rebelling against icons and calling their worshipers idolaters. Around 700, John of Osun, the patriarch of Armenia, wrote a denunciation against this sect, which contains an accusation of a real anti-Manichean type, but with a certain peculiarity that puts his story in a strange connection with the game we have just been talking about. Reporting that they blasphemously call the Orthodox "idolaters" and that they themselves worship the sun, he claims that they, moreover, mix wheat flour with the blood of children and partake of it. “When they kill the boy, the first-born of their mother, with the most painful death, they throw him to each other in turn, and in whose hands the child dies, they pay respect to him, as a person who has reached the highest dignity in the sect.” How to explain the coincidence of these terrible details? It is unlikely that this game was inspired by the legend of the Paulicians. The most probable assumption is that this game was as well known to the children of the 8th century as it is today, and that the Armenian patriarch simply used it. He accused the Paulicians of seriously doing the same thing to living children that the guys did to the symbolic smoking room. We are in a position to trace another interesting group of games that have survived as a remnant of an area of savage worldview that once held an important place, but now deservedly came into Tylor E. B. = Myth and Rite in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. --9 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 10 - decline. Gambling is closely related to the art of divination, already known to savages, and perfectly shows how what was once taken seriously can degenerate into a comic relic. For a modern educated person, to cast lots or a coin means to rely on chance, that is, on the unknown. The solution of the question is left to a mechanical process, which in itself has nothing supernatural or even extraordinary, but which is so difficult to follow that no one can accurately predict its outcome. However, we know that this was not at all the idea of chance that was characteristic of antiquity. It had little in common with the mathematical theory of probability, and very much in common with sacred divination,10 and was akin, to take an example from later times, to the custom of the Moravian brethren to choose wives for their young men by casting lots with prayer. The Maori did not have in mind a blind chance when casting lots to find a thief among suspected people, as did the Guinean negroes when they went to a fetish priest who shook a bunch of small strips of skin and made a sacred prediction. In Homer, the crowd prays to the gods with their hands raised to the sky, when the heroes draw lots from the hat of Atrid Agamemnon to find out who should go to battle with Hector, to help the well-armed Greeks. Praying to the gods and looking at them, the German priest or father of the family, according to the stories of Tacitus, took out three lots from the branches of a fruit tree scattered on clean white clothes, and interpreted the answer of the gods by their signs. Just as in ancient Italy the oracles gave answers by means of carved wooden lots, so the Hindus settled their disputes by casting lots in front of the temple and calling on the gods with cries: “Do us justice! Point out the innocent!" An uncivilized person thinks that the lot or the dice, when they fall, is not accidentally arranged according to the significance that he attaches to their position. He invariably tends to suggest that some spiritual beings are hovering over the fortuneteller or player, shuffling lots or turning dice to make them give answers. This view was firmly held in the Middle Ages, and even in recent history there is an opinion that gambling is not complete without supernatural intervention. About what change took place in the views on this issue at the end of the Middle Ages, some idea is given by a work published in 1619, which, apparently, itself contributed to this change in no small way. I am referring to the treatise On the Properties and Uses of Lots, where the author, Thomas Goethaker, a Puritan priest, among other objections to gambling refutes the following, very common in his time: the location of the lot proceeds directly from God... The lot, as they say, is a matter of God's special and immediate discretion; it is a sacred oracle, Divine judgment or sentence; therefore, to use it lightly is to abuse the name of God and thus violate the third commandment.” Getaker dismisses such views as mere superstition. It was, however, quite a long time before this opinion gained currency in the educated world. 40 years later, Jeremiah Taylor still expressed the old understanding of things, speaking in favor of gambling, if they go not for money, but for goodies. “I have heard,” he says, “from those who are skilled in these things, that there are very strange cases here: movements of the hand by inspiration, some divination tricks, constant gains on the one hand and inexplicable losses on the other. These strange accidents entail such terrible actions that it is not unbelievable that God allowed the devil to interfere in gambling, who makes everything bad out of them that he can. If the game is not played for money, he is not able to do anything. How tenacious this notion of supernatural interference with gambling, which still persists as a relic in Europe, is clearly shown by the flourishing and still thriving divination of players. The popular belief of our time continues to teach that for good luck in the game, you should bring with you an egg consecrated in the temple on Good Friday and that turning a chair entails turning happiness. The Tyrolean knows a conspiracy by which one can acquire from the devil the gift of a happy game of cards and dice. On the European continent, books are still in circulation that promise to teach how to find out the lucky number for the lottery from dreams, and the Serbian peasant even hides his lottery tickets under cover in the altar so that they can receive a blessing from the Holy Gifts and thus have a better chance. for a win. 12 Divination and gambling are so similar to each other that in both cases the same tools are used. This is evident from the very instructive accounts of the Polynesian manner of divination by Tylor E. B. = Myth and rite in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -10 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 11- spinning coconut. In the islands of Tonga, during the time of the Mariner, this fortune-telling was solemnly performed in order to find out if the sick person could recover. Previously, a prayer was loudly read to the patron god of the family that he directed the movement of the nut. The latter was then allowed in, and its position at the stop showed the will of God. In other cases, when a coconut was thrown just for fun, the prayer was not recited and no significance was attached to the results. This is where the serious and playful uses of this primordial spinning top come together. On the islands of Samoa, according to Turner, though later, the same actions pursued a different goal. The participants sit in a circle, a coconut is launched in the middle, and the oracle's answer is considered to refer to which way the underside of the nut is facing when it stops. It is not known whether the Samoans used this divination in the old days to detect a thief or for some other reason, but now they keep it simply as a lot and as a game of forfeits. In favor of the opinion that this custom was originally a serious divination, is evidenced by the fact that the New Zealanders, although they do not have coconuts, still have traces of the time when their ancestors in the tropical islands had these nuts and divined from them. The well-known Polynesian word "niu", i.e. coconut, is still used by the Maori to refer to other methods of divination, especially stick divination. R. Taylor, from whom this vivid example of ethnological evidence is taken, gives one more case. The method of divination here was to bring the hands together while the corresponding incantation was repeated. If the fingers passed freely, the prediction was considered favorable, if they were hooked, it was bad. When the question was whether it was possible to pass through the country during the war, the interpretation was very simple. If the fingers passed freely, then this foreshadowed a happy transition, if several fingers were delayed, then a meeting should have been expected, if all the fingers were delayed, then this meant the impossibility of passage. A similar connection between divination and gambling can be seen in simpler subjects. Take, for example, grandmas. They were used in ancient Rome for divination, and then they turned into rough dice. Even when the Roman player used the dice to play, he had to call on the gods before throwing the dice. Items of this kind are often found now in games. However, their use for divination was by no means limited to the ancient world. Babki are mentioned as early as the 17th century. among the objects by which young girls guessed about marriage, and Negro sorcerers still use bones as a means to detect thieves. The lot serves both these purposes equally well. The Chinese play dice for both money and dainties, but at the same time they are seriously looking for omens, solemnly drawing lots stored for this purpose in temples. They have professional fortunetellers always sitting in the markets to open the future to their customers. Cards are still used in Europe for divination. The ancient cards, known as the tarot, are said to be preferred by fortune-tellers to ordinary cards, because a deck of tarot cards, in which the figures are more numerous and more complex, gives more scope for a variety of predictions. History cannot tell us whether the original use of the cards was for divination or for playing. In this regard, the history of the Greek kottabos is instructive. This divination consisted in pouring wine from a glass into a metal bowl placed at some distance so as not to spill a single drop. The one who splashed out the wine, at the same time pronounced aloud or in his mind the name of his beloved, and by the transparency or cloudy color of the splashes from the wine falling on the metal, he found out what fate awaits him in love. Over time, this custom lost its magical character and became just a game in which dexterity is rewarded with a prize. If this case were typical, and if it could be proved that divination preceded the game, then gambling could be considered a relic of the corresponding methods of divination. Comic fortune-telling could turn into a serious game of chance. Looking for other examples of the durability of some of the customs that have become established among mankind, let's look at a group of traditional expressions, venerable in their antiquity - old sayings of particular interest as survivals. Even when the real meaning of these expressions has disappeared from the memory of people and they have lost all meaning or obscured by some later superficial meaning - even then the old sayings continue to be of great interest to us. We have heard the expression "buy a pig in a poke", i.e. "buy a thing without seeing it", from people who are not so familiar with the English language to understand the meaning of the word "bag". The real meaning of the phrase "to sow wild oats" seems to have been lost in its recent usage. No doubt this once meant that bad herbs would subsequently grow and that it would be difficult to eradicate them. As the parable speaks of an evil spirit, so the Scandinavian Loki2, the culprit of troubles, the Jutland proverb says that he sows oats, and the name "Loki's oats" corresponds among the Danes to the concept of "wild oats". Proverbs, the source of which was Taylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -11 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 12 A forgotten custom or legend is, of course, especially likely to be subjected to such misuse. The expression “unlicked cub,” about one who still has to take on a finished form, has become purely English. Meanwhile, only a few remember the explanation of these words in the story of Pliny. Its meaning is that bears are born blind, naked, clumsy "pieces of meat" and must be "licked into shape." In these proverbs, which are sometimes the relics of ancient magic and religion, one can sometimes find a deeper meaning than that which is put into them now, or find a real meaning in what now seems absurd. How a folk proverb can be the embodiment of an ethnographic memory, we see clearly from a Tamil proverb still known in South India. If one beats the other, and the third screams, then the Tamils say about the screamer: “He is like a coravan who eats assafetida for his sick wife!” Coravans are a tribe in India and assafetida is a medicine. At present, the Koravans belong to the lower strata of the population in Madras. They say about the koravan that he is “a gypsy, a tramp, a donkey driver, a thief, that he eats rats, lives in matting huts, is engaged in divination and is generally a suspicious person.” The proverb is explained by the fact that native women generally use assafetida as a tonic after childbirth, while among Koravans, in this case, it is not the wife who eats it, but the husband. In fact, this is an example of a very common custom of "kuvada" when, after the birth of a woman, her husband undergoes treatment. Often he is even forced to go to bed for several days. The Koravans seem to be among those tribes who had this strange custom, and their more civilized Tamil neighbors, struck by its absurdity and not knowing its now forgotten meaning, turned it into a proverb. Let us try to apply the same kind of ethnographic key to the obscure expressions of our newest language. The English expression “the hair of the dog that bit you” was at first neither a metaphor nor a joke, but a real recipe for a dog bite, one of the many examples of the ancient homeopathic teaching: what hurt you, so heal .. This is mentioned in the Scandinavian Edda: “ Dog hair cures dog bites. The expression "to catch up with the wind" is now used by the English in a humorous sense, but once it quite seriously meant one of the most frightening witches' actions, once attributed especially to 16 Finnish sorcerers. English sailors still have not forgotten their fear of their power to command the storm. The ancient rite of ordeals, which consisted of walking through a fire or jumping over a burning fire, was so firmly established in the British Isles that Jamison derived from this rite the English proverb "to drag over the fire," meaning trial, trial. This explanation does not seem to be a stretch at all. Not so long ago, an Irish woman in New York was tried for killing her child: she put it on burning coals to find out if it was really her child or a changeling. An English nurse who says to a capricious child: “You got out of bed today on your left foot,” usually does not know the meaning of this saying. She is quite satisfied with the popular belief that getting out of bed with your left foot means having a bad day. This is one of many examples of a simple association of ideas, connecting the concept of right and left with the concept of good and evil. Finally, the expression "draw the line" seems to go back to a number of well-known legends, where a person makes a pact with the devil, but at the last minute gets rid of him either thanks to the intercession of a saint, or through some kind of ridiculous trick, like humming the words of the Gospel, who gave the word not to read, or refuses to fulfill the contract after the fall of the leaves under the pretext that the stucco leaves in the church are still on the branches. One of the forms of a medieval pact with a demon was that for teaching students his black art, instead of a teacher's salary, the devil had the right to take one of the students for himself, letting them all run to save their lives and grabbing the last one - a story that obviously had a connection with another folk proverb: "Damn the one who is behind everyone." But even in this game, one can draw a quick-witted line, as popular belief in Spain and Scotland says, in the legends of the Marquis de Villano and the Count of Soutesca, who studied at the magic schools of the devil in Salamanca and Padua. The dexterous apprentice leaves his shadow to his mentor as the last of the fugitives, and the devil must be content with this immaterial payment, while the new magician remains free and only loses his shadow forever. It seems possible to admit that popular belief is closest to its source where a more important and more sublime significance is attributed to it. Thus, if any old verse or Tylor EB = Myth and rite in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -12 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 13 - the proverb in one place has an exalted meaning and refers to philosophy or religion, and in other places it is at the level of a children's saying, then there is some reason to consider the serious meaning more primitive, and the comic meaning a mere relic of antiquity. If this argument is not always true, then it should not be completely neglected. In the Jewish religion, for example, two poems are preserved, usually placed at the end of the Passover service in Hebrew and English. One of them, known as “Khad gad” I, begins with the words: “A goat, a goat, which my father bought for two coins.” Then follows a story about how a cat came and ate a goat, a dog came and bit the cat, and so on to the end. “Then the only saint appeared - blessed be he! - and killed the angel of death, and the angel of death killed the butcher, the butcher killed the bull, the bull drank the water, the water flooded the fire, the fire burned the stick, the stick killed the dog , the dog bit the cat, the cat ate the goat that my father bought for two coins. This work is taken by some Jews as a parable relating to the past and future of the Holy Land.According to one of the explanations, Palestine (the goat) was devoured by Babylon (the cat), Babylon was ravaged by Persia, Persia by Greece, Greece by Rome, until finally the Turks took possession of the country. The Edomites (that is, the European peoples) will drive out the Turks, the angel of death will destroy the enemies of Israel, and the kingdom of his sons will be restored under the rule of the messiah. still retaining some of its original form, and that it appeared to express some mystical idea.If so, then the well-known children's tale in England about the old woman who could not reach her goat (or pig) from behind the fence and did not want to return until the very midnight, must be considered a distorted adaptation of this old Hebrew poem.Another work is a verse numbering and begins like this: Who knows one? - I (said Israel) know one. There is one God in heaven and on earth. Who knows two? - I (said Israel) know two: Two tablets of commandments; but one is our God in heaven and on earth. And so on, increasing all the way to the last, next verse: Who knows thirteen? - I (said Israel) know thirteen: thirteen divine attributes, twelve tribes, eleven stars, ten commandments, nine months before the birth of a child, eight days before circumcision, seven days of the week, six books of the Mishnah, five books of the Law, four foremothers, three patriarch, two tables of commandments, but one is our God in heaven and on earth. This is one of a whole series of poetic numberings, which, apparently, were very much appreciated by medieval Christians, since they are still not completely forgotten in the villages. One old Latin edition says: “There is one God”, etc. And one of the English versions that still exists now begins with the words: “One is completely alone and will forever remain alone” - and continues to count to twelve: “twelve - twelve apostles ". Here both the English and Hebrew forms are or were of a serious nature, and although it is possible that the Jews imitated the Christians, the more serious nature of the Hebrew poem here again makes one think that it appeared earlier. The old proverbs, inherited by our modern language, are far from meaningless in themselves,19 because their wit is often as fresh and their wisdom as stable as of old. But, having these practical qualities, proverbs are also instructive in their significance in ethnography. But their scope in civilization is limited. Apparently, they are almost non-existent among the most primitive tribes. They first appear in a definite form only in some of the fairly high-ranking savages. The inhabitants of the Fiji Islands, who until a few years ago were in what archaeologists might call the Late Stone Age, have some very characteristic proverbs. They laugh at the lack of consideration, saying: "The Nakondo (tribe) first of all cut down the mast" (i.e., before they build a boat). When some poor man looks enviously at a thing that he cannot buy, they say: "He sits in the calm and looks out for fish." One of the New Zealand proverbs describes the lazy glutton as follows: "Deep throat, but shallow strength." Another says that the lazy one often uses the work of the industrious: “Large chips from a strong tree go to the couch potato,” and the third expresses the truth that “you can see the curvature of the stem, but you cannot see the curvature of the heart.” Among the Basotho of South Africa, the proverb "Water does not get tired of flowing" is given as a reproach to talkers, the proverb "Lions roar when they eat" means that there are people who are never satisfied with anything. "The month of sowing is the month of headache" - it is said about those who shirk from work. "The thief eats thunderbolts" - means that the thief himself incurs the punishment of heaven. Tylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -13 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 14- The peoples of West Africa are so strong in terms of proverbs that Captain Burton, during the rainy season, amused himself in Fernando Po by compiling a whole volume of native proverbs, hundreds of which are on the same high level as European proverbs. The proverb “He left the sword and got caught in the sheath” is just as good as our sayings “From the frying pan to the fire” or “From the fire to the frying pan”. The Negro proverb, "He whose only eyebrow serves as a bow, can never kill an animal," if not so elegant, is certainly more picturesque than the English one, "A rude word does not break bones." The old Buddhist aphorism "A man who indulges in enmity is like one who throws ashes from the leeward side: the ashes fly back and cover him from head to toe" is expressed less prosaically and with more wit in the Negro proverb "The ashes fly back in the face of the one who throws him." When someone tries to settle a case in the absence of those to whom it directly relates, the Negroes will say: "You cannot shave a man's head when he is not here." To explain that the master cannot be blamed for the stupidity of his servants, they say: "The rider is not yet stupid because the horse is stupid." A hint of ingratitude is expressed in the proverb "The sword does not know the head of the blacksmith" (who made it) and even stronger in the proverb "When the gourd saved them (during the famine), they said: cut it off to make a cup out of it." The usual contempt for the poor man's mind is vividly shown in the saying "When a poor man makes a proverb, it does not go far." At the same time, the very mention of composing proverbs as a completely possible thing shows that the art of composing proverbs is still alive among them. Africans transported to the West Indies retained this art, as can be seen from the proverbs “If the dog goes behind, she is a dog, and if in front, she is a mistress-dog”, “Every hut has its mosquitoes”. Over the course of history, the proverb has not changed its character, retaining its precisely defined type from beginning to end. Proverbs and sayings recorded among the advanced peoples of the world number in the tens of thousands and have their own well-known extensive literature. But although the area of existence of proverbs and sayings extends to the highest levels of civilization, this can hardly be said about their development. At the level of European medieval culture, of course, they played a very important role in the education of the people, but the period when they were created, apparently, has already come to an end. Cervantes raised the art of proverb to a height beyond which it had never gone, but it must not be forgotten that the sayings of the incomparable Sancho were for the most part inherited. 21 Even at that time, proverbs were already a relic of the former society. In this form, they continue to exist in our time, and we use almost the same remnants of great-grandfather's wisdom that made up the inexhaustible supply of the famous squire. Nowadays, it is not easy to remake old sayings or make up new ones. We may collect old proverbs and use them, but composing new ones would be a feeble, lifeless imitation, like our attempts to invent new myths or new children's songs. Riddles appear in the history of civilization along with proverbs and go along with them for a long time, but then diverge along different paths. By a riddle, we mean those problems built in the old fashion, to which a completely serious answer must be given, and not at all a modern, usually reduced to an empty joke, wordplay in the traditional form of a question and answer. A typical example is the riddle of the Sphinx. The original riddles that can be called meaningful originated with the higher savages, and their heyday is in the lower and middle stages of civilization. Although the development of such Ancient Greek king Oedipus was the first to solve the famous riddle proposed by a mysterious creature with the body of a winged lion and the head of a woman, guarding the path to Thebes. According to the myth, the Sphinx asked every passerby the question: “What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?” Those who did not answer her question were killed by the Sphinx. Oedipus answered her that this is the man himself, who crawls on all fours as a child, stands on his feet as an adult, and leans on a stick in old age. Hearing the correct answer, the Sphinx jumped off the cliff and crashed. 22 Tylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -14 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 15- The Sphinx of riddles stops at this level, but many ancient examples of them are still kept in our children's fairy tales and in rural life. It is quite understandable why riddles refer only to the highest levels of primitive culture. To compose them, it is necessary to have a good command of the ability of abstract comparison. In addition, a significant stock of knowledge is needed for this process to become publicly available and move from a serious game to a game. Finally, at a higher level of culture, the riddle begins to be considered an empty business, its development stops, and it is saved only for children's play. A few examples, taken from the riddles of various societies, from the most savage to the most cultured, will more accurately indicate the place that riddles occupy in the history of the human mind. The following specimens are taken from a collection of Zulu riddles written down together with ingenuous native interpretations concerning the philosophy of the subject. Question: "Guess who are those people who are many and who are standing in a row: they are dancing a wedding dance and dressed in white elegant dresses?" Answer: These are teeth. We call them people standing in a row, because the teeth stand like people who have prepared for a wedding dance in order to better perform it. When we say that they are dressed in white elegant dresses, we say this so that it would not be possible to immediately think that these are teeth, we distract from the thought of teeth by indicating that these are people dressed in white elegant dresses. Question: “Guess who doesn’t go to bed at night, but goes to bed in the morning and sleeps until sunset, then wakes up and works all night, guess who doesn’t work during the day and who no one sees when he works?” Answer: Barnyard fence. Question: “Guess who is the person whom people do not like for his laughter, because they know that his laughter is a great evil and that after it there are always tears and joys end. People are crying, trees are crying, grass is crying - everyone is crying in the tribe where he laughs. Of whom do they say that a man who usually does not laugh laughed? Answer: Fire. He is called "man" so that it would be impossible to immediately guess what is being said, since this is hidden behind the word "man". People name many things, vying with each other looking for the meaning and forgetting the omen; A riddle is good when it cannot be guessed right away. Among the Basotho, riddles are a necessary part of education and are offered as an exercise to a whole company of children puzzling over them. Question: "Do you know what is thrown from the top of a mountain and does not break?" Answer: Waterfall. Question: "Who walks agile, without legs and without wings, and whom neither mountain, nor river, nor wall can stop?" Answer: Voice. Question: "What are ten trees called with ten flat pebbles at the top?" Answer: fingers. Question: “Who is that little, motionless, mute boy who is warmly dressed during the day and naked at night?” Answer: A nail for hanging a night dress. From East Africa, let's take as an example the riddle of the Swahili tribe. Question: “My chicken is lying in the thorn bush, who is it?” Answer: Pineapple. From West Africa, the riddle of the Yoruba tribe. Question: "Who is this long, thin merchant who never goes to the market?" Answer: "Boat" (it stops at the pier). In Polynesia, the Samoan islanders are very fond of riddles. Question: "Who are the four brothers who always carry their father on them?" Answer: "A Samoan pillow, which consists of bamboo sticks three inches long, resting on four legs." Question: “What is it - a gray-haired man stands over the fence and reaches the very sky?” Answer: "Smoke from the chimney." Question: "What is it - a person stands between two gluttonous fish?" Answer: language. (The Zulus have a riddle similar to this one, in which the tongue is likened to a man living among fighting enemies.) Here are the old Mexican riddles. Question: “What are those ten Tylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -15 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 16 stones that everyone has? Answer: Nails. Question: "What is it - where we enter with three doors, and exit with one?" Answer: shirt. Question: "Who goes through the valley and drags his entrails with him?" Answer: Needle. These riddles, found among primitive tribes, do not in the least differ in their character from those that have found their way, sometimes in a somewhat renewed form, into the children's fairy tales of Europe. So, Spanish children still ask: “What dish of nuts is removed for the day, and scattered at night?” (Stars). The English proverb about tongs ("Long legs, crooked hips, small head and no eyes") is so primitive that a Pacific Islander could have composed it. Here is a riddle on the same subject as one of the Zulu riddles: “A flock of white sheep is grazing on a red hill; they walk here, they walk there; are they still worth it now? Another is very similar to the Aztec riddle: “Grandma Twitchette had only one eye and a long tail that fluttered, and every time she passed over the pit, she left a piece of her tail in a trap. What is this?" The composition of riddles is connected to such a degree with the mythological period in history that any poetic comparison, if it is not very obscure and remote, with a certain slight rearrangement, can become a riddle. The Hindus call the sun Santashva, i.e., "riding on seven horses," and the same idea lies in the old Germanic riddle, which asks: "What wagon are drawn by seven white and seven black horses?" (A year that is carried by seven days and seven nights of the week.) This is the same Greek riddle about two sisters, Day and Night: "Two sisters, of which one gives birth to the other and, in turn, will be born from her." Such is the mystery of Cleobulus, which reflected the features of primitive mythology: A father of one has twelve sons, who gave birth to Every thirty virgins, having a double appearance. White one at a glance, the other is black. They are all immortal, although their death awaits. Such questions can now be guessed just as easily as in the old days, and must be distinguished from that rarer class of riddles, for the solution of which some dissimilar events must be guessed. A typical example of such riddles is the riddle of Samson and one Scandinavian riddle similar to it. The point is that Hestr found a duck sitting on its nest in the horned skull of a bull, and then proposed a riddle describing, using a purely Norman metaphor, a bull whose horns were already turned into wine cups. Here is the text of the riddle: “The long-nosed goose has grown strongly, rejoicing at its chicks. He collected wood to build a dwelling. The chicks were protected by herbal incisors (jaws with teeth), and a sonorous drinking vessel (horn) hovered above. Many of the answers of the ancient oracles present difficulties of exactly the same kind. Such is the story of the Delphic oracle, who ordered Temen to find a man with three eyes to lead the army, and Temen fulfilled this command by meeting a crooked man on horseback. Curiously, this idea is found again in Scandinavia, where Odin proposes a riddle to King Heidrek: "Who are the two who look like a creature with three eyes, ten legs and one tail?" And the king replied that it was the one-eyed god Odin himself riding his eight-legged horse Sleipnir. The close connection between the doctrine of survivals and the study of manners and customs is constantly revealed in ethnographic research. And it seems hardly too bold to say once and for all that customs now meaningless are survivals, and that where these customs first arose they had a practical or at least ritual significance, although at the present time, having been transferred to a new environment in which their original meaning is lost, they have become absurd. Of course, new customs introduced at a certain time may be funny or stupid. Taylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -16 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 17- The Athenian king Aegeus, questioning the oracle 26 us, but still they have their own motives that can be recognized. It is this method, which consists in referring to some forgotten meaning, that seems to generally best explain the dark customs, which some seemed to be the manifestation of stupidity. A certain Zimmermann, who published in the last century the ponderous Geographical History of Mankind, remarks on the predominance of such senseless and stupid customs in various distant lands as follows: probably, taking into account the much greater number of fools and stupid heads, that some similar stupidity could be introduced in two countries far from one another. Therefore, if in two peoples the ingenious fools were important and influential people, as is indeed very often the case, then both peoples accept similar stupidities, and then, after a few centuries, some historian will extract his proofs from this; that one of these peoples is descended from the other. Strict views about the unreasonableness of mankind seem to have been in full swing during the French Revolution. Lord Chesterfield was no doubt a very different person from the German philosopher mentioned, but both agree on the absurdity of customs. Giving advice to his son on court etiquette, he writes the following: “For example, it is considered respectful to bow to the king of England and irreverent to bow to the king of France. With regard to the emperor, this is a rule of courtesy. Eastern monarchs demand that the whole body prostrate before them. These are established ceremonies and they must be performed, but I doubt very much that common sense and reason will be able to explain to us why they were established. The same is found in all classes, where certain customs are adopted, which must be obeyed, although by no means can they be recognized as the result of common sense. 27 Take, for example, the most absurd and widespread custom of drinking to health. Could anything in the world matter less to another person's health than drinking a glass of wine? Common sense, of course, will never explain this, but common sense commands me to conform to this custom. Although it would be rather difficult to make sense of the minute details of court etiquette, Lord Chesterfield very unfortunately presents the latter as an example of the folly of mankind. In fact, if someone were asked to define in short terms the attitude of the people to their rulers in various states, he could do this by answering that people bow down to the ground Tylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -17 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 18 - to the King of Siam, that they kneel or take off their hats before the European monarch and shake hands firmly with the President of the United States, as if the handle of some kind of pump. All these are ceremonies, understandable and at the same time meaningful. Lord Chesterfield chose his second example better, because the custom of drinking to health is indeed of obscure origin. However, it is closely connected with an ancient rite, practically, of course, absurd, but established with a conscious and serious intention that does not allow it to be classified as nonsense. It is the custom to make libations and drink at solemn feasts in honor of the gods and the dead. Such is the ancient Norman custom of drinking in honor of the ancient Germanic gods Thor, Odin and the goddess Freya, as well as in honor of kings at their burial. This custom did not disappear with the conversion to Christianity of the Scandinavian and German peoples. They continued to drink in honor of Christ, the Mother of God and saints instead of pagan gods and heroes, and the custom of drinking for the living and the dead at the same feast with the same exclamations: “Gods minni! (to the glory of God)" - sufficiently proves the common origin of both rites. The word "minne" meant at the same time love, remembrance and the thought of the absent. It has long been preserved as a relic in the name of the days on which the memory of the dead was honored with worship or feasts. Such evidence 28 fully justifies those writers, old and new, who have regarded these ceremonial wine-drinking practices as essentially sacrificial practices. As for the custom of drinking for the health of the living, information about it comes to us from various areas in which the Aryan peoples lived, from ancient times. The Greeks drank to each other's health at feasts, and the Romans adopted this custom. The Goths shouted “heils” when answering toasts to each other, as can be seen from the curious opening line in the poem “Decohviis barbaris” in the Latin anthology, which mentions gothic salutatory exclamations around the 5th century, in words that still retain some of their meaning to the English ear . As for ourselves, although the old salutary greeting “Be healthy” (“Wacs hael”) has ceased to be an ordinary English greeting, its formula remains, having passed into a noun. In general, it can be assumed, although not with complete certainty, that the custom of drinking for the health of the living is historically connected with the religious rite of drinking in honor of the gods and the dead. Let us now subject the theory of survivals to a rather rigorous test. We will try to explain with its help why, within the framework of modern civilized society, there exist in practice or as a tradition three remarkable groups of customs, which cannot be explained at all by civilized concepts. Although we shall not be able to clearly and completely explain their motives, it will, in any case, be a success if we are able to trace their origin to savage or barbarous antiquity. If you look at these customs from a modern practical point of view, then one of them is ridiculous, the rest are cruel, and all in general are meaningless. The first is a greeting when sneezing, the second is a ritual that requires a human sacrifice when laying the building, the third is a prejudice against saving a drowning man. In explaining the customs relating to sneezing, it is necessary to keep in mind the view prevailing among primitive societies. Just as they thought of the soul of a person, 29 that it enters and leaves his body, so it was also believed about other spirits, especially those who supposedly enter the sick, take possession of them and torment them with diseases. The connection of this idea with sneezing is best seen among the Zulus, who are firmly convinced that the good or evil spirits of the dead hover over people, do good or evil to them, appear to them in dreams, enter them and cause them illness. Here is a summary of the native evidence collected by Dr. Callaway. When a Zulu sneezes, he says, “I have been blessed. Idkhlozi (ancestral spirit) is now with me. He came to me. I need to quickly praise him, because he makes me sneeze! Thus, he glorifies the souls of his dead relatives, asking them for cattle, wives and blessings. Sneezing is a sign that the patient will recover. He thanks for the sneezing greeting, saying: “I have gained the well-being that I lacked. Keep being kind to me!" The sneeze reminds the person that he should immediately name the Itongo (ancestral spirit) of his people. It is Itongo who makes a person sneeze, so that by sneezing he can see that Itongo is with him. If a person is sick and does not sneeze, those who come to him ask if he sneezed, and if he did not sneeze, then they begin to feel sorry for him, saying: “The disease is severe!” If a child sneezes, they say to him: "Grow up!" This is a sign of health. According to some natives, the sneezing of blacks reminds a person that Itongo has entered him and is with him. Zulu soothsayers and sorcerers tend to sneeze more often and believe that this indicates the presence of spirits; they glorify them by calling them: "Makozi" Tylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -18 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 19- (i.e. gentlemen). An instructive example of the transition of such customs from one religion to another are the Negroes of the Amakoz tribe, who usually called upon their divine ancestor Utixo when they sneeze, and after their conversion to Christianity began to say: “Savior, look at me!” or: "Creator of heaven and earth!" Similar concepts are found, according to descriptions, in other parts of Africa. Sir Thomas Brown relates the well-known story, 30 that when King Monomotapa sneezed, exclamations of blessing, passed from mouth to mouth, went around the whole city. He should, however, have mentioned that, according to Godinho, from whom the original story is taken, the same was done when the king drank, coughed, or sneezed. A later story, on the other side of the continent, is closer to our subject. In Guinea in the last century, when the chief sneezed, everyone present knelt down, kissed the ground, clapped their hands and wished him happiness and prosperity. Guided by a different thought, the Negroes of Old Calabar sometimes exclaim when a child sneezes: "Get away from you!" At the same time, they make a gesture, as if throwing away something bad. In Polynesia, sneezing greetings are also very common. In New Zealand, when a child sneezes, a spell was said to prevent evil. Among the Samoans, when sneezing, those present said: “Be alive!” On the islands of Tonga, sneezing while preparing for the journey was considered the worst omen. A curious example from American life relates to the famous expedition to Florida by Hernando de Soto, when Guachoya, a native chief, came to pay him a visit. “While all this was going on, Katzik Guachoya sneezed heavily. The people who had come with him and were sitting along the walls of the hall between the Spaniards all suddenly bowed their heads, spread their arms, folded them again and, making various other gestures, signifying great reverence and reverence, greeted Guachoya, saying: "May the sun keep you, protect you." you, give you happiness, save you" and other similar phrases that came to mind. The rumble of these greetings did not subside for a long time, and on this occasion the astonished governor said to the gentlemen and captains accompanying him: "Isn't it true that the whole world is the same?" The Spaniards remarked that such a barbarian people should have the same ceremonies, or even more, than peoples who consider themselves more civilized. Therefore, this way of greeting can be recognized as natural for all peoples, and not at all the result of a pestilence, as is usually said. 31 In Asia and Europe, superstitious ideas about sneezing are common in a wide range of tribes, centuries and countries. Among the related references from the classical times of Greece and Rome, the following are most characteristic: the happy sneeze of Telemachus in the Odyssey; the sneezing of a warrior and the cry of glorification of the gods that passed through all the ranks of the troops, which Xenophon called a happy omen. Aristotle's remark that the people consider sneezing divine: a Greek epigram for a man with a long nose who, when sneezing, could not say "Save me, Zeus" because the noise of sneezing was too far away for him to hear; the mention of Petronius the Arbiter about the custom to say “Salva” (“Be healthy” to a sneezing person); Pliny's question: "Why do we welcome sneezing?", about which he remarks that even Tiberius, the most gloomy of men, demanded the observance of this custom. Similar customs when sneezing were often observed in East Asia. Among Hindus, when someone sneezes, those present say: “Live!”, And he answers: “With you!” This is a bad omen, and, by the way, the Tugs4 paid great attention to it when they went to catch people for their bloody sacrifices. It even forced them to release captured travelers. The Hebrew formula for sneezing is: "Tobim Chaim!" - "Good life!" A Muslim, sneezing, says: “Praise be to Allah!”, And friends greet him with the appropriate words. This custom passes from generation to generation wherever Islam is spread. Through medieval Europe, he moved to modern. Here, for example, was how they looked at sneezing in medieval Germany: “The pagans do not dare to sneeze, because it says: “God help!” We say when sneezing: "God help you." For England, the following verses (1100) can serve as an example, from which it is clear that the English formula "Be healthy!" It was also used to prevent a disease that could occur from sneezing: "Once sneezing, people believe that they will feel bad if you do not immediately say:" To health "". In The Rules of Courtesy (1685), translated from the French, we read: "If his Lordship happens to sneeze, you must not shout at the top of your voice: 'God bless you, sir', but taking off your hat, courteously bow to him and say this appeal to yourself. The Anabaptists5 and Quakers6 are known to have dropped both these and other salutations, but they remained in the code of English good manners among the upper and lower classes for at least 50 years or so. And even now they are not yet forgotten: many find the most witty in the story of Tylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -19 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 20 to the violinist and his wife when his sneezing and her hearty "Be healthy" interrupt his violin lessons. There is nothing strange that the existence of these absurd customs for many centuries was a mystery to inquisitive researchers. In particular, the scribblers of legends were wiser about this custom, and their attempts to find historical explanations left their mark on the philosophical myths of the Greeks, Jews and Christians. In Greek legend, Prometheus7 prays for the preservation of his artificial man when he gave the first sign of life with a sneeze; in the Hebrew Jacob - about the fact that the soul does not leave the body of a person when this person sneezes, as happened before; in the Catholic Pope Gregory - about the aversion of pestilence in those days when the air was so deadly that he who sneezed died from it. According to the legends, the formulas pronounced when sneezing originated from these imaginary events. It is even more important for our purpose to note the existence of a corresponding set of beliefs and customs associated with yawning. The Zulus considered frequent yawning and sneezing to be signs of impending possession by an evil spirit. When yawning, a Hindu must squeeze his thumb and some other finger and say the name of one of the gods, for example Rama, several times: neglecting this rite is as big a sin as killing a Brahmin. The Persians attribute yawning and sneezing to being possessed by an evil spirit. Among Muslims, when a person yawns, he covers his mouth with his left hand and says: “Allah, protect me from damned Satan!” Actually, according to the Muslim view, yawning should be avoided, because the devil has a habit of jumping into the mouth of a yawner. This is probably the meaning of the Jewish proverb: "Do not open your mouth to Satan." The story of Josephus Flavius, who saw how one Jew, named Eleazar, cured demoniacs in the time of Vespasian, belongs to the same category of views, pulling demons out of them through their nostrils. He did this with the help of a ring containing a root, which had mystical power and which Solomon mentions. Tales of a sect of Messalians spitting and blowing their noses to exorcise demons that might enter their noses when breathing, testimonies of medieval exorcists exorcising devils through the nostrils of the sick, a custom, still observed in Tyrol, of crossing oneself when yawning in order to do something unkind did not enter through the mouth - all this reflects similar views. When comparing the views of the latest Kaffirs with the views of the peoples of other parts of the world, we come across a clear idea that sneezing comes from the presence of spirits. Apparently, this is the real key to solving the problem. This is well explained by Haliberton with regard to the popular Celtic beliefs expressed in stories, from which it follows that a sneezing person can be dragged away by fairies, unless their power is met with opposition in some exclamation like "God bless you." A related notion of yawning can be found in an Icelandic folk legend, where a troll (small mountain spirit), transformed into a beautiful queen, says: “When I yawn with a small yawn, I am a beautiful tiny girl; troll, when I yawn a full yawn, I become a troll all over. Although the superstitious idea of sneezing is by no means universal, yet its considerable prevalence is highly remarkable. It would be extremely interesting to determine to what extent this spread occurred due to original development in different countries, to what extent it is a consequence of the transition from one tribe to another, and to what extent it is a great-grandfather heritage. Here we only want to confirm that originally it was not some accidental custom devoid of any meaning, but the expression of a known principle. The completely unequivocal evidence of the present day Zulu is in keeping with what can be drawn from the superstitions and popular beliefs of other tribes. This allows us to connect the views and customs regarding sneezing with the idea of the ancients and savages about the spirits that penetrate and take possession of a person, which were considered good or evil and were treated accordingly. The remnants of ancient formulas that have survived in modern Europe seem like an unconscious echo of the time when the explanation of sneezing was not yet within the competence of physiologists, but was at the “theological level”. It is widely believed in Scotland that the Picts, to whom local legend ascribes buildings of prehistoric antiquity, irrigated the laying of their buildings with human blood. The legend says that even St. Columba found it necessary to bury St. Oran alive under the foundations of her monastery in order to appease the spirits of the earth, who destroyed at night what was being built during the day. Already in 1843 in Germany, when a new bridge was being built in Halle, there was a rumor among the people that a child should be laid in the foundation of the building. The view that a church, wall, or bridge needs human blood or an immured sacrifice to secure its foundations is not only widespread in European folk beliefs, but also practiced, as confirmed by local chronicles and traditions such as Tylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -20 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 21 is a historical fact in many countries. So, for example, when it was necessary to restore a collapsed dam on the Nogata River8 in 1463, the peasants, following the advice to throw a living person there, made the beggar drunk, as they say, and buried him there. The Thuringian legend says that in order to make Liebenstein Castle strong and impregnable, a child was bought from the mother for a lot of money and laid in the 35th wall. While it was being walled up, the child was eating a pie. When the masons set to work, the story continues, he shouted to his mother: “Mom, I can still see you,” then a little later: “Mom, I can still see you a little,” and when the masons laid the last stone, he shouted: “Mom, Now I can't see you anymore." The walls of Copenhagen, according to legend, collapsed several times as they were built. Finally, they took a little innocent girl, seated her at a table with delicacies and toys, and while she played and ate, twelve masons laid a vault over her. Then, with the thunder of music, the wall was erected, and since then it has always stood strong. An Italian legend tells of the bridge over the Arta that it was constantly collapsing until the builder's wife was put into it. She, dying, cast a spell so that from now on the bridge would tremble, as a flower stalk trembles. The Slavic princes, laying the citadel, according to the old pagan custom, sent people to seize the first boy they met, and laid him in the wall of the building9. A Serbian legend tells how three brothers conspired to build the fortress of Skadra (Scutari), but year after year the vila, or mermaid, ruined at night what 300 masons had erected during the day. This enemy had to be propitiated by a human sacrifice. She was to serve as the first of the three wives, who would bring food to the workers. All three brothers swore to keep a terrible secret from their wives, but the two older brothers changed their oath and warned their wives. The wife of the younger brother, not suspecting anything, came to the construction site, and they laid her in the wall. But she begged to leave a hole there so that she could breastfeed her child, "and they brought him to her for twelve months. Serbian women still go to the grave of a good mother, to a source of water flowing along the fortress wall and similar to admixture of lime to milk.Finally, there is an English legend about Vortigern, who could not finish his tower until the foundation stones were moistened with the blood of a child born to a mother without a father. 36 As is usually the case in the history of sacrifices, here again we are confronted with a substitution of victims. Known, for example, are empty coffins embedded in walls in Germany; a lamb buried under an altar in Denmark to keep the church strong; a human cemetery where a live horse was buried first. In modern Greece, an obvious survival of this view is the belief that the first person to pass a new building after the first stone has been laid will die within the same year. Therefore, as a substitute, masons kill a lamb or a black rooster on this first stone. The German legend, based on the same idea, tells of an evil spirit that interfered with the construction of the bridge. They promised him a soul, but they deceived him by letting a rooster go over the bridge first. One German folk belief says that before entering a new house, it is good to let a cat or dog in. All this forces us to admit that we have before us not only a frequently repeated and changing mythological theme, but a recollection of a bloody barbarian rite, preserved in oral and written tradition, which not only really existed in ancient times, but also persisted for a long time in European history. If we now look at less cultured countries, we will find that this rite is preserved to this day and quite obviously has as its goal either the propitiation of the victim by the spirits of the earth, or the transformation of the soul of the victim into a patronizing demon. In Africa, in Galama, in front of the main gate of a new fortified settlement, a boy and a girl were usually buried alive to make the fortification impregnable. This custom was once widely practiced by a Bambara despot. In Great Bassam10 and Yoruba11 such sacrifices were offered at the foundation of a house or village. Ellis heard of a custom in Polynesia, illustrated by the fact that the central pillar of one of the temples of Mawa was erected over the body of a human victim. On the island of Borneo, among the Milanauan Dayaks, a traveler witnessed how, during the construction of a large house, they dug a deep hole for the first post, which was hung over it on ropes. The slave girl was lowered into the pit and, at this signal, the ropes were cut. A huge beam fell into the pit and crushed the girl to death. It was a sacrifice to the spirits. Saint John saw a milder form of the ceremony, when the head of the Kuop Dayaks placed a high pole near his house, and a chicken was thrown into the pit prepared for him, which was supposed to crush this pole. The more cultured peoples of South Asia preserved until modern times the rite of sacrifice at the foundation of a house. A Japanese story from the 17th century mentions the belief that a wall erected over the body of a voluntary human sacrifice, Tylor EB = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -21 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected]|| http://yanko.lib.ru || 22- is protected by this from various misfortunes. Therefore, when they began to build a large wall, some unfortunate slave offered to become a foundation and lay down in a prepared pit, where heavy stones piled on him killed him. When the gates of the new city of Tavoy, in Tenasserim, were being built twenty years ago, Mason heard from eyewitnesses that in each of the pits prepared for the pillars a criminal was thrown as a sacrifice to the patron demon. Thus, such stories about human sacrifices buried for the patron spirits under the gates of the city of Mandalay13, about a queen drowned in the Burma ditch to make it strong, about a hero whose body parts were buried under the fortress of Tatuig to make it impregnable - all these stories are memories, in historical or mythological form, telling about the really existing customs of the country. Even in the English dominions there was such a case. When the Raja of Sala-Bin was building the fortification of Sial Kot in the Punjab, the base of the southeastern bastion was destroyed several times. Therefore, the Raja turned to a fortuneteller. The latter convinced him that the bastion would not hold until the blood of the only son was shed, as a result of which the only son of a widow was sacrificed. All this clearly shows that the vile rites, about which Tylor E. B. in Ev38 = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -22 624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 23- Human sacrifices to the pope have survived only a vague memory, still retain their ancient significance in Africa, Polynesia and Asia in those societies that are, if not chronologically, then according to the degree of their development, representatives of the oldest stages of civilization. Walter Scott tells in his "Pirate" about the peddler Brace, who refused to help Mordaunt save a sailor who was drowning after a shipwreck. Expressing an old Scots belief, Brace points out the rashness of such an act. “Are you out of your mind? - says the peddler. - You, who have lived in the Scottish Isles for so long, want to save a drowning man? Don't you know that if you restore his life, he will probably do you some terrible harm? If this inhuman belief were noticed only in Scotland alone, then one might think that it was of some local origin, which now defies explanation. But when such superstitions are found among the inhabitants of the islands of St. Kilda, and among the Danube boatmen, and among French and English sailors, and even outside Europe, among less civilized peoples, then it is no longer possible to explain this state of affairs by any local fictions. We have to look for some very common belief related to archaic culture. Hindus will not save a man who is drowning in the sacred Ganges, and the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago share this cruel attitude towards a drowning man. Among the primitive Kamchadals this prohibition has the most remarkable form. They consider it a big mistake, says Krasheninnikov, to save a drowned man: the one who saves him will drown after himself. Steller's story is even more extraordinary and probably applies only to cases where the victim actually drowned. He says that if a person somehow accidentally fell into the water, then it was considered a great sin for him to get out of it: if he was destined to drown, he commits a sin, saving himself from death. No one would let him into their home, talk to him, give him food or a wife, considering him dead. If 40 people fell into the water even in the presence of others, they would not help him get out of the water, but, on the contrary, would drown him. These savages avoided the fire-breathing mountains, since spirits supposedly live there and cook their own food. For the same reason, they consider it a sin to bathe in hot springs and fearfully believe in the existence of a sea spirit that looks like a fish, which they call Mitgk. This Kamchadal spiritualistic belief is, without a doubt, the key to their ideas about the salvation of the drowning. Even in modern Europe, remnants of this belief can be found. In Bohemia, as a not very old report (1864) says, fishermen do not dare to pull Tylor out of the water EB = Myth and rite in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -23,624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 24 - a drowning person. They are afraid that the merman will take away their luck in fishing and drown them at the first opportunity. Such an explanation of the prejudice against the salvation of the victims of water spirits can be confirmed by a mass of facts taken from various countries of the world. Thus, when examining the customs of sacrifice, it turns out that the usual way of offering a sacrifice to a well, river, lake or sea consists simply in throwing a thing, animal or people into the water, which should itself or through the spirit living in it take possession of them. That an accidentally drowned person was considered just such a prey of water is proved by many beliefs of wild and civilized peoples. Among the Sioux Indians, Unktah, a water monster, drowns his victims in streams or rapids. In New Zealand, the natives believe that great supernatural reptile monsters called Tanivga live in meanders of the rivers, and those who drown are said to have been dragged away by these monsters. The Siamese are afraid of Pnuk, or the water spirit, which seizes bathers and carries them away to its dwelling. In the Slavic lands, this is always done by Topilec, who drowns people. In Germany, when someone drowns, the people remember the religion of their ancestors and say: "The river spirit demanded its annual sacrifice", or more simply - "Nyx took him." It is quite obvious that from this point of view, the rescue of a drowning man, i.e., tearing the victim out of the very claws of the 41 water spirit, is a reckless challenge thrown to the deity, which can hardly remain unavenged. In the civilized world, the crude old religious idea of drowning has long since been replaced by a physical explanation, and the prejudice against rescuing drowning people has almost or completely disappeared. But the archaic ideas, which have passed into folk beliefs and poetry, still point to an obvious connection between the primitive view and the custom that has survived from antiquity. As the social development of the world advances, the most important views and actions may, little by little, become mere vestiges. Their original meaning is gradually eroded, each generation remembers it less and less, until finally it completely disappears from the memory of the people. Subsequently, ethnography tries, more or less successfully, to restore this meaning by bringing together bits of scattered or forgotten facts. Children's games, folk sayings, absurd customs may be practically unimportant, but from a philosophical point of view they are not without significance, since they belong to one of the most instructive phases of ancient culture. The ugly and cruel superstitions of this or that person may turn out to be remnants of primitive barbarism, and at the same time, education for such a person is the same as it was for Shakespeare's fox, "which, no matter how you tame it, no matter how you cherish it and protect it, will preserve wild cunning of their ancestors. Tylor E. B. = Myth and ritual in primitive culture. / Per. from English. D. A. Koropchevsky. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2000. - -24,624 p. ill. Yanko Slava (Fort/Da Library) [email protected] || http://yanko.lib.ru || 25- Chapter II MYTHOLOGY □ Mythological fiction, like all other manifestations of human thought, is based on experience. □ The transformation of myth into allegory and history. □ The study of myth in its actual existence and development among contemporary savage and barbarian peoples. □ The original sources of the myth. □ The oldest teaching about the animation of nature. □ Personification of the sun, moon and stars; waterspout; sand column; rainbow; waterfall; pestilence. □ An analogy turned into myth and metaphor. □ Myths about rain, thunder, etc. □ The influence of language on the formation of a myth. Material and verbal representation. □ Grammatical gender in relation to myth. □ Proper names of objects in relation to the myth. □ The degree of mental development, conducive to mythical fiction. □ Teaching about werewolves. □ Fantasy and fiction. □ Natural myths, their origin, rules for their interpretation. □ Natural myths of higher savage societies in comparison with related forms among barbarian and civilized peoples. □ Heaven and earth as universal parents. □ Sun and moon: eclipse and sunset in the form of a hero or a maiden devoured by a monster; the sun rising from the sea and descending into the underworld; the mouth of the night 43 and death; Symplegades; the eye of heaven, the eye of Odin and Gray. □ Sun and moon as mythical civilizers. □ The moon, its impermanence, its periodic death and resurrection. □ Stars, their offspring. □ Constellations, their place in mythology and astronomy. □ Wind and storm. □ Thunder. □ Earthquake Among those beliefs that are generated by a small stock of information and which must disappear with the development of education, is the belief in the almost limitless creative power of the human imagination. Perhaps nothing can so well study the laws of the imagination as certain events of mythical history, as they pass through all known periods of civilization, bypassing all the physically different tribes of the human race. Here Maui, the New Zealand sun god, who caught the island with his magic rod and pulled it from the seabed, will take his place near the Indian Vishnu, who dived into the very depths of the ocean in the incarnation of a boar in order to raise the flooded earth on his huge fangs. There, the creator Bayam, whose voice is heard by the rude inhabitants of Australia in the thunder, will sit on the throne next to the Olympian Zeus himself. Starting with the bold and crude natural myths in which the savage clothed the knowledge he had learned from his childhood contemplation of the world, the ethnographer can trace these crude works of fantasy right back to the epoch when they were framed and embodied in a complex of myths.
